Help with a party for a new run please

DeeKayNL

Hey all,


I'm thinking of creating 2 custom charachters and adding 4 NPC's to my party.

I want to experience different playing styles. There are some classes i never played before as CHARNAME.

Monk
Bard
Cleric
Druid

Druid doesn't seem very fun /powerful to me. Or did Cernd make a bad example?

So i was thinking of creating 2 characters, one monk and the 2nd or a bard or a Beserker/Cleric . Then my next question is how to fill this party with NPC's

I am also thinking of creating a Priest like character cuz i'm kinda tired of Anomen and i already have a lot of runs with Viconia.

I think I need my NPC's to fill to roles of Thief,Arcane Magic, Tank.

Any idea's? Should i skip the bard and pick a custom priest ? Should i pick Viconia and keep the Bard? Edwin for arcane and Korgan as Tank? Seems like evil but dont know who could fill those roles on a good party.

How would the next party sound?

(bard and monk)

Monk
Bard (dont know which kit)
Viconia
Edwin
Korgan
??? PS want imoen later on at this place, should i keep Yoshimo?

(B/c and monk

Monk
Berserker/Cleric (i wanna be a good aligned for detroying undead, but korgan and edwin are evil)
Korgan
Edwin
Thief of sort



PS playing BG2EE

Thanks you all

Gallenger

There is a monk NPC to try out too don't forget. So you could triple up.

I'd say bard and some form of cleric or druid would probably get you the most mileage. You really only need one. Don't forget too, that Haer'Dalis is a blade, so if you'd rather play a blade that could make your life easier.

Druid is pretty great, but it has a huge period of down time. Cleric has lots of nifty spells, but not some of the most devastating abilities that druids get, but they can also tank until AC becomes irrelevant later on - druids can too once they get high enough level. I assume you've had your go around with Jaheira being a fighter/druid, or Cernd as a druid, so I'd suggest giving the avenger a try. It's basically your bog standard druid + some handy mage spells.

Good guy + Rasaad (he's LG) set up:

Bard (Haer or your creation), Rasaad, Avenger, Yoshimo, and then your choice of available melee characters and an arcane caster if desired (Keldorn, Mazzy, Minsc, Korgan, Dorn, etc). You can play it as more of a neutral party if you wish, as Rasaad isn't as prickly as the paladins about *you* being LG. I'd maybe even drop Yoshi for Jan in such a party to get some more arcane.

If you don't want Rasaad, the parties you listed would be fine. Monks are interesting characters and require a lot of baby sitting to get a bunch of use out of them, but they can be lots of fun.

The ideal thing with using ol' Rasaad is that if you find you hate the monk class (which a lot of people do), you can just drop him when you get frustrated without having to restart.

Borek

I will add that to Turn undead you can be good or Neutral, a few items require good, but as a B/C you will be prohibited from using them anyway so i wouldn't worry about it, IMO Neutral cleric is where it's at due to getting access to Turn Undead and getting both the good and Evil versions of spells like Holy Smite.

DeeKayNL

Thank you both for your really helpfull answers!! I think i almost got it :P
BTW the reply made me check the Avenger spellbook against the Clerics spellbook.
Got a better feeling of the Divine spells now.

There are some questions regarding the spells that an Avenger will not have compared to a Priest that i used often. Are there alternatives??

- Remove Fear --> ?
- Animate dead --> Druid got a lot of other summons (elementals, etc.)
- Remove Paralysis --> ?
- Restoration --> Scroll of Restoration?
- Raise Dead --> The Rod of Ressurection (keep it charged)
- Turn undead --> How do YOU fight the undead?? I always have problems with the undead

My party would consist of the follwing members, I will make my PC’s in the Neutral Alignment:
- PC Skald or Blade. Got to research this some more. Dont know the differences enough.
- PC Avenger or B/C Dualclassed
- Rasaad
- Korgan (for his melee power)
- Edwin (arcane power)
- Jan (thieving with arcane support)
I allways think what weapons they would be using so i wont have a problem in that department.

So i was thinking
- Skald/Blade ???
- Avenger (Sling and Shield) | B/C Dual Wield (CromFaer and Flail of Ages)
- Rasaad (Fists)
- Korgan (Axes)
- Edwin (sling)
- Jan (Firetooth)
The only questions i still have are the situation with the spell difference like stated above and the difference between Skald and Blade and the correct weapon choices fort hem.
Thanks again!

Thels

What's a B/C Dualclassed? You can only Dualclass legit multiclass combinations (in either order), so:

Ranger/Cleric
Fighter/Cleric
Fighter/Druid
Fighter/Mage
Fighter/Thief
Cleric/Thief
Mage/Thief
Cleric/Mage

Tresset

@Thels Berserker/Barbarian -> Cleric?

DeeKayNL

Indeed a Beserker -> Cleric, like mentioned in my opening post. Forgive me if my slash indicated a multiclass to you. Not quite experienced at how to indicate multiclass, Dualclass and other abreviations.

EDIT: In the meantime, i did my research for Blade or Skald. The Skald seems a kit that requirs more of a passive playstyle. Not really my thing. The Blade on the other hand seems fun. Still thinking about weapons though. Seems Longswords or shortswords make the most sense to me. What do you think?

PS still leaves the question about the Divine spells.

PS2 Would Jan not be too much arcane, with Edwin, Blade and Jan?

Thels

Ahh, I forgot about potential kits. Yeah, a Berserker -> Cleric works. And it wasn't so much that the slash indicated a multiclass, but that dualclasses are restricted to the possible multiclasses.

Tresset

I once did a Berserker->Shadowdancer using my modding knowledge to pull it off. Thing was crazy OP... and I liked it!

Skatan

DeeKayNL said:

Indeed a Beserker -> Cleric, like mentioned in my opening post. Forgive me if my slash indicated a multiclass to you. Not quite experienced at how to indicate multiclass, Dualclass and other abreviations.

EDIT: In the meantime, i did my research for Blade or Skald. The Skald seems a kit that requirs more of a passive playstyle. Not really my thing. The Blade on the other hand seems fun. Still thinking about weapons though. Seems Longswords or shortswords make the most sense to me. What do you think?

PS still leaves the question about the Divine spells.

PS2 Would Jan not be too much arcane, with Edwin, Blade and Jan?

For Blades (as well as for swashies) you want APR weapons primarily. There are three weapon categories that holds weapons that will add another attack per round;
Scimitars (Belm +2, early) and Scarlet Rose (+3, available late, after UAI. Monk only)
Shortswords: Kundane +2 (semi-early)
Daggers (throwing, held in mainhand and used in melee): Boomerang +2 (early) and Firetooth +3 (late)

So you should probably use at least one of these categories, though bare in mind, daggers have to be in mainhand to give +APR, scimis and shortswords are usually in the off-hand (due to lower enchantment level).

So with this said, you could go with ie Katana + Scimitar. It will give you:
+2 APR weapon, Belm, accessable super-early. +4 weapon also available very early (level 1 watcher's keep, ie the "mini CF" which you probably want in some fights where THAC0 and/or enchantment level 3+ is needed; usono's blade)
Dak'kon's blade +2 katana that gives +spell slots and AC, either as mainhand for some time (until CF) or just on switch for the added spellslot (switch, case a long lasting buff, then switch back to your regular mainhand for fighting and lose the added spellslot which is already spent anyways). You can buy it very early if you do a little shoplifting ^^ Then you pick up celestial fury and kick ass with it's 3 attacks per round with offensive spin and Belm.
Also, scimitars offer you a good +5 alternative later on and another offhand weapon after HLAs are available to you.

If you go with dagger and scimi/shortsword it will give you:
Go directly and pickup the boomerang dagger in the bridge district, it's +2 and you will put it in the mainhand and use it for a looooong time. It's high base damage 2D4 is good, but since you will fight with off.spin which gives you max damage, it's actually better for swashies than for blades IMHO. (Offensive spin make katanas a really good option for the +2 damage you inflict, as mentioned above). You will later on replace it with the firetooth dagger +3. Pro's is that you can chuck a few daggers ranged with off.spin if you are caught behind your tanks or on melee enemies closing in on you with just a flip on the quickbutton. Very versatile.
Kundane shortsword is your next agenda point, go do the planar prison quest and retreive it. It's pretty much "made" for Haer'dalis, but not it's for you instead. In this quest you will also get a great armor for your blade (elven chainmail; cast spells in armor). Kundane is +2 and adds the APR to your mainhand so now you have 4 base with 5 during off.spin or 8 in IH. You can just as easily replace shortswords with scimis and use Belm instead. Looking at your NPC roster it doesn't seem you have any overlap on these weapons so you can stack them all on your charname.

Shortswords and scimitars:
Well, it's just the combo of the two above: Belm + Kundane (Belm in mainhand due to being slashing damage, kundane is piercing) and then later on Scarlet in mainhand with a higher enchanted weapon on switch. Later on also have +5 scimitar in mainhand and scarlet in offhand for a very good +5/+3 +1APR combo.

Longsword and ss/scimi:
In any part of the game, there's ALWAYS a good longsword available. You can never be wrong using longswords. Combine with offhand weapon on choice, shortsword or scimitar.
If combined with shortswords; congratz! You just copied Haer'dalis

Conclusion:
The reason why I put these as different categories is because you will not have enough pips to choose them all so you need to plan ahead a bit. [EDIT correction you will get a lot of points but since you have less than fighters etc you should still plan ahead to make sure you build for both versatility and power. Then you branch out to whatever you want later on. ]If you choose only one of these categories you can instead add another ranged weapon on switch, ie darts (hey, with offensive spin, 4 APR and doing max damage, it's actually nothing to scoff at), tuigan's shortbow (4 APR) with some cool arrows of detonation or whatever you have handy or maybe xbow of speed for 3 APR with whatever bolts you have available. I like bolts of biting for the poison tic that can interrupt mages etc. Arrows are normally more versatile than bolts though, but YMMW.

As a last note, though I personally seldom do it, if you feel you have a pip point to spare, then put it into a blunt weapon so you can damage those immune to slash/pierce damage. There's no way to increase the APR though so you will be kinda weak. Weilding staff mace +2 in mainhand with +APR offhand still gives a semi-ok 3 APR mainhand blunt attack with off.spin which isn't bad.

Cheers.

DeeKayNL

Skatan said:

So with this said, you could go with ie Katana + Scimitar. It will give you:
+2 APR weapon, Belm, accessable super-early. +4 weapon also available very early (level 1 watcher's keep, ie the "mini CF" which you probably want in some fights where THAC0 and/or enchantment level 3+ is needed; usono's blade)
Dak'kon's blade +2 katana that gives +spell slots and AC, either as mainhand for some time (until CF) or just on switch for the added spellslot (switch, case a long lasting buff, then switch back to your regular mainhand for fighting and lose the added spellslot which is already spent anyways). You can buy it very early if you do a little shoplifting ^^ Then you pick up celestial fury and kick ass with it's 3 attacks per round with offensive spin and Belm.
Also, scimitars offer you a good +5 alternative later on and another offhand weapon after HLAs are available to you.



Longsword and ss/scimi:
In any part of the game, there's ALWAYS a good longsword available. You can never be wrong using longswords. Combine with offhand weapon on choice, shortsword or scimitar.
If combined with shortswords; congratz! You just copied Haer'dalis

I think it's gonna be one of these 2 options. Something to think about.

Is there on the worldwide web a list of which quests to do when? I know most quests but never know when to do them.

Vheissu

DeeKayNL said:

There are some questions regarding the spells that an Avenger will not have compared to a Priest that i used often. Are there alternatives??

- Remove Fear --> ?
- Animate dead --> Druid got a lot of other summons (elementals, etc.)
- Remove Paralysis --> ?
- Restoration --> Scroll of Restoration?
- Raise Dead --> The Rod of Ressurection (keep it charged)
- Turn undead --> How do YOU fight the undead?? I always have problems with the undead

-the 2nd level mage spell resist fear is superior, lasts a long time
-You have to wait until level 6 druid spells are unlocked, but summon fire elemental is pretty great
-potions of freedom or items that grant freedom will prevent paralysis
-druids get negative plane protection which protects against level drain
-smash undead instead of turning! Area of effect damage spells and slow are useful, as is haste.

You will have to buff a bit more beforehand in general.

Borek

I will also point out that Chaotic Commands kinda negates the need for the lower level cleric buffs like Remove Fear, so once you get plenty of 5th level slots it frees up lower slots for alternative spells. Restoration shouldn't be an issue, Berserker Rage makes you immune, scrolls cure if you mess up and multiple items late-game can cover NPP.

Avenger is really nice for a kit, replaces some of the weaker spell levels with some solid options.

DeeKayNL

The more i read your comments the more i lean towards avenger. My only concern at this time is the lack of the melee. And no one for the foa and crom faer. More challenging thats true.

DeeKayNL

Thank you all, i think i finally found my party for my upcoming run thanks to you all.
The Avenger sounds cool and surely will be used in the future, but in this party I wasn’t sure I should use it. My next run will include an Avenger.
This is gonna be it:

PC: Male Blade (Neutral) Dual wielding Katana’s en Scimitars.
PC: Female Beserker -> Cleric (Neutral) Think i’ll dual at 7 because i usually hate the long downtime. And so far i know the difference between 7 and 9 isn’t groundbreaking. She will be dual wielding flails and hammers.
Korgan: He is going to dual wield axes.
Rasaad: He will be talking with his fists.
Edwin: He will be slinging spells mostly, but will be holding a sling or a throwing dagger.
Jan: Firetooth and als will be slinging spells..

Seems this party is kinda arcane heavy. 3 Spellslingers.
I think the Blade will mostly have spells to help his melee in combat, Edwin will be the offensive spellslinger and Jan will be backup for both arcane casters.
I think I got almost everything covered.

- 4 Melee (Korgan, Blade, Berserker – Cleric, Rasaad)
- 3 arcane (Blade, Edwin, Jan)
- 1 divine (Berserker – Cleric ) I think 1 is more than enough.
- 1 thief (Jan)

What do you all think of this party??

Borek

Looks good, you have everything covered, 3 Arcane casters seems a lot but 2 of them are not pure mages so will be lagging behind Edwin when it comes to over-all power, you also have 2 Berserkers (once B/C is 8+ as cleric) meaning supreme defensive abilities for 2 tanks. I will say that with Rasaad in the group you'll want to stock up on Boots of Speed, it can get annoying with his inate speed letting him reach fights 1st and getting his butt-kicked because of it lol. You can just micro-manage him of course but it'll be handy having 2 sets of boots for Korgan and B/C so they can also zoom into fights.

DeeKayNL

Thank you all for your help.

I started my new run with a little bit of all that i wanted.

I got 2 custom characters

Blade
Berserker - > Cleric

The 4 NPC's that will join me will be:

Rasaad (to try out monk)
Korgan
Edwin
Jan

At this point i got everyone except Edwin.

Im starting doing work for Renal so edwin will be joining soon.

I already got some nice weapons for my crew.
The Flail of Ages, Frostreaver. While doing the Renal jobs i will try to do the guarded compound for the CF.

Next jobs on the list are Planar Prison and level 1 of Watchers Keep. Which should help me get some cool gear and usuno for my blade and the Firetooth for Jan.

AC for Rasaad is - 1at this time. Not so bad.

So far so good.

madmaximus

My blade wields scarlet ninjato in offhand and crom faeyer in main hand. Gives the blade legit thaco and damage. The Blade is good for making use of weapons that your Warriors have not specialized in.

DeeKayNL

Planar Prison and Watchers Keep level 1 are done. Even got to do the Unseeying Eye and Umar Hills. Even the Shadow Dragon fell by my hand. My next trip will be Windspear Hills. After that I think ill visit a wierd group in the bridge district and some mindflayers in the sewers. No plans after that though.

DeeKayNL

One time i had to reload. My blade got infected by a greater mummy. Did more damage than anything else in the game. WEIRD!! I had 80% of my hitpoints left and rapidly died from disease.

Borek

DeeKayNL said:

One time i had to reload. My blade got infected by a greater mummy. Did more damage than anything else in the game. WEIRD!! I had 80% of my hitpoints left and rapidly died from disease.

Yeah the disease is pretty brutal if you get smacked a few times, plus the Greaters hit hard, well worth stocking up on Elixir of Health potions so you can cure it ASAP.

DeeKayNL

Thanks for the tip. Didnt know there was a potion for that. I shall check my potionbag. Should be some in it. I still dont know everything though i played this game a lot. Still dont know all spells. Getting to learn more and more. I like it!

Thanks all

booinyoureyes

Tresset said:

I once did a Berserker->Shadowdancer using my modding knowledge to pull it off. Thing was crazy OP... and I liked it!

@Tresset haha, what a funny combo!
Was their "shadow dance" a mosh pit?

DeeKayNL

Well i did Windspear Hills. Had to reload at Firkraag. After that I went to the sewers and infiltrated the illithid lair. Had to reload like 40 times.... I remember the time where skeleton warriors did the trick. Even with beserker mode and potions of genius i got wiped. Not fun.

Im thinking about installing the mod that changes that back to the settings of the original bg2.

Borek

DeeKayNL said:

Well i did Windspear Hills. Had to reload at Firkraag. After that I went to the sewers and infiltrated the illithid lair. Had to reload like 40 times.... I remember the time where skeleton warriors did the trick. Even with beserker mode and potions of genius i got wiped. Not fun.

Im thinking about installing the mod that changes that back to the settings of the original bg2.

Illithids are always a challenge, it is seriously unwise to try and take them head on unless you can effectively make them focus on someone or something that they cannot damage, control or stun...Skeleton Warriors are great Vs the control/stun part, but even with their innate damage resistance they can still be killed, especially since Illithids have a habit of using Umberhulks which absolutely smash skeleton warriors in melee. So, ideally you need something that is immune to magical weapons, or needs +2 or better to hit, plus cannot be stunned, charmed or dominated.

Best short term option by far is Mordenkainen's Sword, you need +4 weapons to damage them and they are immune to mind control/stun, however it is a 7th level mage spell so likely to be limited as an option and the duration won't be enough to let you clear out an entire nest without multiple castings.

Planetar/Deva is an option, but they can be stunned or controlled if they fail a Save, this makes them risky, but the advantage over the Sword is they do a lot more damage and have spells that can also help.

Chaotic Commands cleric buff should make you immune to their mental abilities, but any tank is going to just get Intelligence Drained once swarmed, even the most insane Armour Class won't stop you getting hit on a 20 and Illithids get multiple attacks per round and often an encounter will have as many as 5 that can surround a tank, those odds are not good. Luckily a Mage can utilise Protection from Magical Weapons 6th level spell to make themselves completely immune to all melee (and by default the intelligence drain that requires a melee attack to hit), the problem is the spell only lasts 4 rounds and you'll need something like a clerics Chaotic Commands to make the mage immune to charm/domination and Stun.

Now these are some options for relatively risk free tentacle collecting, but most of the places you fight Illithids do have abusable terrain, such as doors you can close and/or corridors that are quite narrow, so there's a few somewhat cheesy but highly effective methods i'll add:

Utilise Invisible party members/familiars/summons to form a blockage in the corridor, whilst a ranged attacker with chaotic commands (or at least some protection from charm/domination) simply stands in sight range and guns them down from range with a sling/bow/dagger/axe/hammer/dart, whilst the super intelligent Brain eaters fail to work out that there's a couple of invisible entities blocking them in.

Door abuse can be fun, use someone invisible to open the door, have your mages cast cloud type spells into the room then close the door, trapping them all inside with multiple cloudkills/incendiary clouds/death fog. May take a few attempts as Illithids are heavily Magic resistant, but it won't take long before you work out roughly how many spells are needed to kill a group, or at least whittle them down to just 1 or 2 for your rage monsters to finish off.

Hope this helps.

DeeKayNL

I hope it helps, better than "brainless" trying to melee them

I will give it a shot in the underdark. I'm almost there. I did swap Jan for Imoen... Just cant leave her behind. If i still have to reload 30 times, I will install the mod.

I just finished my evaluation by the mage at the end of the maze. Passed btw
Edit my grammar didnt pass so correcting error.

Ps is Imoen as good with a crossbow as a normal bow when she has a pip in both? Whats you choice?

DeeKayNL

I just was in the underdark's illithids lair. It was much easier than expected. My tactic was to keep my melee from getting stunned. This together with berserk mode made me quite immune to all the stuns and stuff. If you dont get hit (AC) then you got a lot more time to kill them. I had one death. Was Edwin. Unlucky i guess. The mindflayers fell before they could do anything. Even with 3 or 4 of them. Only killed the umber hulks with cloudkills.

DeeKayNL

My run is going really good! At the moment im on my way back to the elves with the rhyn lantern. The underdark caves are o lot easier if you have done enough quests before entering.

Ps i have some more problems with pathing in bg2ee compared to bg2. My characters get stuck a little more behind little things compared to the original.

Borek

DeeKayNL said:

My run is going really good! At the moment im on my way back to the elves with the rhyn lantern. The underdark caves are o lot easier if you have done enough quests before entering.

Ps i have some more problems with pathing in bg2ee compared to bg2. My characters get stuck a little more behind little things compared to the original.

Yeah it can happen, i know there used to be a setting that improved the pathing in the vanilla game but i don't know if it's still an option. I get this occasionally myself, seems to happen more when i use faster moving characters that have changed sprite, such as Shapeshifter in WW form, my SS can't seem to make it from 1 side of the Copper Coronet to the other without getting stuck on an NPC or Table when morphed, it's fine in human-form.

Souplesse

@Skatan oh man ! Thank you for your guid! Just few questions:
-Off spin stack with IH ? If you reach 5 ApR with off spin, you get 10 with IH during 4 rounds?
-I don’T understand all your math, blade don’t get 1 APR for dual? Then base 1 + dual 2 + belm 3 + off spin 4? You said CF + belm + off spin is 3 APR?
Thanks!

Skatan

Souplesse said:

@Skatan oh man ! Thank you for your guid! Just few questions:
-Off spin stack with IH ? If you reach 5 ApR with off spin, you get 10 with IH during 4 rounds?
-I don’T understand all your math, blade don’t get 1 APR for dual? Then base 1 + dual 2 + belm 3 + off spin 4? You said CF + belm + off spin is 3 APR?
Thanks!

Hello @Souplesse!

No, off.spin doesn't stack with IH, so it's either or. You get plenty of off.spins but few spell slots, so you will probably end up using a spin in almost every fight and keep the IH+Tenser's combo for when it's a tougher fight and you don't mind spending all/most of your spell slots at once. Of course you can have a friendly mage cast IH on you as well.
Also, now potions of haste = improved haste, so that's great news for anyone in need of some increased firepower.

If you wield APR weapons in both hands you get: 1 base, +1 offhand, +1 mainhand from Belm, +1 mainhand from Kundane = 4 *2 for IH = 8 max APR. Same with boomerang dagger in main hand and belm in offhand; 1 base + 1 mainhand APR + 1 offhand duak + 1 mainhand APR weapon.

So what I said with regards for CF+Belm is you get 3 APR for MAIN hand, meaning three strikes with the celestial fury + one with belm/kundane, which is not so bad: 1 base mainahand + 1 mainhand from Belm + 1 mainhand from off.spin + 1 offhand from dual weild.